Origins of Games:

Senet:

-Senet is a game that has been found to have originated around 2686-2613 BC in Egypt. Senet is a game that required both skill and chance.

It is speculated that Senet’s status changed overtime, from a pastime to an activity with potent symbolism and with great religious significance.

The Royal Game of “Ur”:

-Around the same time of Senet, in Mesopotamia, a game with dice elements known as Ur was also being played.

It’s clear that games, apart from serving ritual functions, they were also used to entertain in social interactions.

 

Go:

-Go has been played since 200 BC.

 

The Olympic Games (700 BC):

-The beginning of the Olympic Games were held around 776 BC, which were formed and compromised by carefully framed rules, assigning scores to participants.

The Olympic Games of then, like early known board games show us a basic human behavior-to create games, even if it means creating the most “noncreational thing” into a game.

 

-Dice has been used in games of chance from the seventh century BC.

 

-At the time of the first Olympic Games, there was a version of Chess called “Chaturanga”, which was a sanskrit term referring to a “battle formation”

Chaturanga is quite similar to contemporary Chess, a “King” of sorts being the all powerful piece, as well as different pieces having different “powers”, however, it wasn’t until the tenth century, where the game of Chaturanga that was present within some Arab luggage, that it had arrived to Europe and Africa. And it wasn’t until the fifteenth century that it started to undergo a standardization process.

 

Card games would undergo a similar experience around this time (They have only been in Europe for about 2 centuries at this point), which were now given “Standardized card suits”.

 

Mid Eighteenth Cen:

Similar to Senet, playing cards took on symbolic/mystical functions, as they were employed in the service of fortune telling.

1842/1843:

-In this year, the Idea of making a board game based on “actual real-world activities” flourished. Made by Prussian Lieutenant, George Von Reisswitz was the game known as “Kriegsspiel”, this strategy game which offered a wide range of situations, became popular with Prussian army personnel.

-In 1843, the game known as The Mansion of Happiness became the first commercially produced game in the US. This board game offered a simplistic vision of the world, where good deeds were rewarded and bad ones were punished.

 

1930’s, Monopoly:

-In the Mid 1930’s, the game of Monopoly, published by Parker Brothers would be released. This title was based on a previous board game called “The Landlord’s Game” as well as other so-called “descendants” however, these didn’t achieve the fame of Monopoly.

 

-Monopoly doesn’t attempt to put on an act about awarding in-game niceties, the game combines strategic thinking of the player’s drive for dominating a fictional real estate world with the factor of chance. The game rewards nothing better than bold capitalist perseverance, which directly challenges the cultural values and values of its players, which is why it became such a success with younger audiences of the time, allowing it to sell over 200 million copies worldwide. Thanks to its success, it allowed for board games to be established as a foundational family activity for all ages.

 

WW’s:

-During the aftermath of WWII, electronic games were struggling to flourish. In the 1950’s, we would see the publications of various strategic war games, including the games “Risk” and “Diplomacy”

The complexity of “Kriegsspiel” does bleed into many of these war games. However, Diplomacy barely relies on rule sets. Players battle for domination in a WW1 Europe, and Negotiations as well as Interpersonal Scheming are crucial for this goal, creating a Layered Machiavellian experience despite the simplicity of the rules.

 

Mid 20’ TH Century:

-Around the mid twentieth century, commercially produced games were an established part of cultures around the globe. We played games of chance, games of strategy and war, as well as games that simulate aspects of the real world/of real life.

 

-In 1954, J.R.R Tolkein published The Lord of The Rings, which would completely revolutionise the landscape of literature and introduce the world to the fantasy genre.The world wide success would cause more authors to recreate their own worlds such as mediaeval or mythical worlds which would be stacked with magic, dragons and heroes. Despite this spur of authors, none had reached the success of J.R.R Tolkein’s tale, which catered to many hungry readers and ultimately created the many fantasy fans which continue to thrive nowadays.

 

-The 1960’s saw the rapid increase of war games, strategic tabletop games where maps, dice, and figures (which would be used to simulate battles), which were used to recreate historical conflicts.

 

-Around the 1970’s, the “pen and paper RPGs” would be developed thanks to popular convergence as well as popular trends around the time.

 

-War games and Fantasy games found a primary audience of young/teenage males, so it was only a question of time for both genres to merge. The best example of these would be war games with a fantasy aesthetic/theme, which would usually star elves and orcs which replaced the armies formed by the European empires.

 

-The mother of all RPG games, Dungeons and Dragons (Created by Dave Arneson and Gary Gyax in 1974), is directly based on a fantasy war game called Chainmail. When it originally came out, D&D was selling around 7,000 copies a month. By 1979, it had “spawned” a multitude of sequels as well as numerous gamers to become game designers, this was because of the game’s complex rules which seemed to be a magnet for aspiring designers, who went on record to adapt D&D’s several rules into their own fantasy worlds.

 

-After the success of D&D, RPG games seemed to grow in popularity exponentially. Some of them aimed to simplify complicated rules whilst maintaining a fantasy setting. In 1976, Runequest was released, which was set in a fictional world during the bronze age; its rules have been praised as the beginning of modern RPG.

Other games introduced new universes and settings, such as 1977’s Traveller, a science fiction game.

 

-However, by the end of the 1970’s, the media news media spread a “concern” about the hobby of Role-playing, as they connected the fact that youth cases of suicide or criminal activity.behaviour were related to role-playing games. This was enhanced further with the general public not really appreciating the pastime of allowing young people sit in their living rooms, discussing mediaeval weapons or slaughtering monsters, as this struck some parents to be morbid or unhealthy for their children. (Page 65) Role-playing games were also labelled as “Blasphemous” by religious cycles. These controversies have also occurred to their video-game counterparts, which have eclipsed their table-top counterparts drastically in world wide sales.

 

MUD and History In VG’s:

-MUD is a Multi User Dungeon which is a system for virtual role playing (usually found in chat rooms)

-Video-games have removed the need for a “Dungeon Master”

-Tabletop games have inspired MUD and text adventures, which slowly turned into the MMO’s we know nowadays.

-The history of games doesn’t fall into categories that easily, so it’s easier to categorise it by decades.

-Regardless of the project, the importance of history is prominent as history does tend to repeat itself.

-Sometimes history is very important, games such as WoW have direct history with MUD such as copying the communication interface from MUD.

 

PG 67:

-It isn’t clear as to what the first videogame was.

 

-In 1949 Cambridge, UK, scientists managed to start operating a very early computer (EDSAC), however it wasn’t until 3 years later that a PHD student got a single player version of tic tac toe to run on it.

 

-In brookhaven laboratory, visitors were under-impressed by the massive mainframes on display. As an effort to impress the public, “tennis for two” was made. Despite being electronic, it ran on analogue equipment.

 

PG 68:

-In 1961, in MIT, three men developed “Spacewar!” on a friendly computer (of the time) to interest visitors of the lab since they were unimpressed by the tic tac toe

 

-Despite Spacewar! Probably being the first videogame, it was certainly not the first step in the process.

 

-Spacewar! Became an inspiration for game developers of the time, and because of its success, it was given a couple of updates with new features.

 

-The only other milestone in the 60’s, is that a TV engineer began the base development for the first “At home” game console, with the intention of being played on a Television.

 

-Despite many action games being developed, it wasn’t until “Magnavox” picked up the technology in a deal and included this technology in their TV sets.

 

PG 69:

-In 1970’s, video games grew extensively, marking the beginning of the gaming industry.

 

-Arcade games were played on dedicated coin operated machines.

 

-Atari was the most important game producer of the time, they created an unsuccessful copy of Spacewar!, which paved the way to create the game Pong, which was a commercial success and heavily impacted and created a new market in corporate America.

 

-The aforementioned Magnavox deal further developed into the Odyssey console.